


A Name and a Face(book)

by thats_my_die_ary (ScarlettEyes)



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: American Politics, Computer Science, Facebook, Facebook happened because of the Death Note, Gen, Harvard University, Harvard/MIT rivalry, I do too much research about everything, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, MIT, Mark Zuckerberg goes crazy trying to influence politics for his own gain, Mark Zuckerberg is Kira, Politics, Social Media, relatable yet insane Mark Zuckerberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22590247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarlettEyes/pseuds/thats_my_die_ary
Summary: What if Ryuk had dropped the Death Note on the Harvard campus instead of in Light's high school? And what if Mark Zuckerberg picked it up at his lowest point?This fic is meant to be humorous and exploratory, but it does touch on some heavy political themes so please be warned.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	A Name and a Face(book)

**Author's Note:**

> Light: I'm going to use the Death Note to make the world a better place.  
> Mark Zuckerberg: I'm going to use the Death Note to inflame people's extremist political opinions which will somehow manage to get me an internship despite my horrible GPA.

_ Never go to Massachusetts in February, _ Mark Zuckerberg thought as he trudged his way across the Harvard campus, trying to get back to the warmth of his radiator-heated dorm room. The snow was ankle deep, and he was sure his feet would fall off the moment he tried to take his boots off. Cold air blew against his back, propelling him forward. His building was less than a mile away, but it felt like it would be forever before he reached it. Another gust of wind struck him, almost knocking him off of his feet.

_ At least my laptop won’t be overheating anymore. _

He reached the door to his building and managed to slide his key out of his wallet with his frozen fingers. It took a few tries, but the janky lock finally turned with a click and he pushed the door open. The inside of the building was marginally warmer than the outside, but not by much.

_ The radiators must be broken again. Or they’ve decided that their 40 billion dollar endowment isn’t worth spending on preventing hypothermia in the undergraduate student population. _

Another gust of wind hit him as he was unbuttoning his jacket. He turned to realize that the previously spring-loaded door was now flapping around outside in the wind with no spring loading to speak of.

_ 40 billion dollar endowment. How could an organization have so much money and not care? _

As he re-buttoned his jacket and reached to close the door, a small black book-like object fell, seemingly out of the sky, and hit the ground only a couple meters from the doorway. He contemplated just leaving it, but decided that if it had been his book of notes for the computer science class he was almost failing, he would have paid his entire bank account’s worth of savings to have a benevolent stranger save it from the blizzard outside—not that his entire bank account’s worth of savings would mean anything to most people. Sighing, he trudged the few steps outside, grabbed what seemed like a black notebook, and took it inside.

Death Note. He read the cover again, just to be sure he hadn’t misread it. Death Note.

_ Must be some emo kid’s diary. _

He tossed the notebook aside and reached into his backpack for the book he was currently reading. It was a standard sci-fi thriller series—one of the ones that people pretended to like just because it was slightly more philosophical than the latest dystopian trend and slightly less mainstream than  _ A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy _ . His hand fished around and found nothing.  _ The library. _ He had wanted to finish studying for his test the next day, but decided that one more chapter wouldn’t hurt and pulled out the book. When he had left, he had ignored the book in his hurry to get to class on time.

_ Damn it. I guess I’ll have to go back for it tomorrow. No point walking all the way back now. _

Of course, there were plenty of other (better) things he could be doing, such as studying for that test, or writing code for his project, or telling his friend that he wasn’t going to his party because “something came up.” Mark contemplated each of those options and decided to go for the emo diary instead. After all, it was the only thing that wasn’t assigned to him with a deadline, and he was in no mood to do something that was assigned to him with a deadline.

He flipped the notebook open to the first page. He was surprised to see that it wasn’t a page of crying about My Chemical Romance, but a page of what seemed to be rules.

“1. The human whose name is written in this note shall die.”

_ Well I guess it’s a prank. I wonder if MIT sent this. _

He read further. The list of rules was quite comprehensive, describing the outcomes of most of the edge cases he had thought of:

_ What about people who share a name? _

“This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.”

_ How will they die? _

“If the cause of death is written within the next 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen.”

_ So just writing a name with no cause won’t work? _

“If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.”

_ How specific can you be? _

“After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.”

_ Definitely MIT. _

He considered just writing “MIT” in the notebook and sending it back. Harvard students had to be smart enough to know that something like this was fake. Besides, there wasn’t exactly anyone he wanted dead.

_ Wait. Saddam Hussein. Osama Bin Laden. George W. Bush. Everyone who’s ever killed anyone in cold blood. Everyone who’s ever harmed a child. Everyone who…  _

He turned on the news.

“BREAKING NEWS: Kidnapper Jason Cartwright has taken students hostage at Buckingham Browne and Nichols Elementary school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He currently has a classroom at gunpoint. Police are standing by and preparing to intervene.”

About a week ago, Mark had decided to see a school therapist for the first time. He wasn’t doing particularly well academically, and his friends all lived in different dorms. This was fine during earlier months, when the walk to see his friends was through beautiful fall foliage and crisp autumn weather, but once the snow started falling, it became much more difficult to contact his friends. The therapist had initially suggested calling or emailing, but Mark explained that he couldn’t exactly do that for small things that would come up in personal conversations but weren’t worth an entire phone call or email. What he missed most was sharing stuff like suddenly finding an object he had lost, or an interesting article he had found while aimlessly browsing the internet. He loved the websites that only showed up because his search engine didn’t know how to optimize its searches. After Mark rejected every solution offered, his therapist had just given in and offered the most cliché advice possible.

“You should start a diary or something. At least get that anger out of you.”

Mark stared at the paper in front of him.

_ I suppose it might be cathartic to pretend that I’m killing these horrible people. I can rip the page out before sending it back to MIT and they’ll never know I did something so stupid. _

He grabbed his pencil and wrote “Jason Cartwright” on the page. Just for kicks, he added “Cause: murdered by falling classroom object.”

_ Now let’s pretend that those kids will be fine in 40 seconds. _

He counted them down on his watch. 40 seconds passed, and he sighed. The notebook lay open on his desk, Jason Cartwright’s name written neatly on the top left corner of the first sheet of paper.

“MORE BREAKING NEWS: The hostages appear to be fleeing the school!”

_ Wait what? _

Mark turned up the volume of his tiny cathode ray TV. One of the hostage teachers ran up to the reporter, who happily asked what had happened.

“The projector just fell on his head!” the teacher exclaimed loudly into the mic. “It just fell straight from its ceiling mount onto the guy’s head and he was just out completely!”

Mark tensed in his chair with a gasp.

_ No way. It can’t be. He wasn’t. It had to have been a coincidence! _

He quickly wrote another name. It was the name of one of the top football players at the school, who had been charged and acquitted with sexual assault earlier that year.

“Nathan Decker. Cause: death by football.”

About a minute later, his phone began buzzing with texts and calls. An email popped up on his laptop. He started reading.

“Nate Decker just died.”

“Dude Nate just got totally fucking annihilated by a football.”

“Well no more star quarterback for us time to actually do academics like a good Ivy League school.”

Mark was frozen in shock. This Death Note actually worked. It was the real deal.

_ MIT is great and all but they could never make something like this, and even if they could, I’m sure as hell not giving it back. _

He even considered writing “Prof. Malcolm Rivera. Cause: heart attack after giving his student, Mark Zuckerberg, and A in his computing systems class.” It was surprisingly hard to resist the urge. Instead, he decided to look through the school newspaper. The newspaper had never been a major part of Mark’s life, though he picked up a copy every time they released just to appease his friend who was on the editorial team. This was one of his first times actually reading it. To his surprise—or perhaps only to his disappointment—quite a few of the opinion pieces were rather extreme. There was one article containing thinly-veiled anti-Semitism behind the mask of statistics. Another described the “tragic story” behind a serial killer’s actions. This was a totally different side of Harvard he had completely ignored.

_ These people aren’t worth killing. In fact, they might do better if they were connected to each other and could stay in their own little section of extremist thought without bothering the rest of us. _

He sighed. It was useless trying to corral then; it would only make him seem like one of them the moment he reached out. Besides, he had a weapon of death on his hands and that was a far more important issue to deal with. The people who deserved to die were the people committing muggings and assaults on campus, not the ones brewing extremist thought in secret opinionated cauldrons. The ones “Securitas” ignored, resulting in their barely passable B+ grade on Niche.

His thoughts were interrupted by footsteps rapidly approaching his door. It was one of his roommates: Eduardo Saverin, the only one who didn’t have late afternoon classes. Eduardo would have walked straight past Mark’s tiny single room in their suite-style dorm if Mark hadn’t suddenly felt… a tap on his shoulder? He turned around, confused, and was faced with a giant monster dressed in black leather. The scream he let out was the loudest noise he had made in years.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” said the monster. “I am the Shinigami Ryuk.”

Mark gave Ryuk a blank stare.

“A shiny what?” he finally asked, confused as ever.

Eduardo knocked on his door.

“Everything ok in there, Mark?”

“Yeah. Everything’s fine. I just fell off my chair.”

“Ok. You sure? Also I bought apples for the suite if you want some.”

Ryuk perked up at that. “Say yes.”

Mark looked at the giant demon-like monster again.

“Say yes,” Ryuk repeated, more forcefully this time.

“Uh, sure. I’ll come out and get them ok? No need to come in,” Mark said, in his loudest most confident voice.

“Did you say come in?” Eduardo asked, shuffling closer to the door.

Mark was about to say an emphatic “No” when Eduardo burst into his room and handed him a couple apples from a grocery bag.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Mark’s face was indeed sheet white as he kept moving his eyes between Ryuk and his roommate.

“What are you looking at?” Eduardo pressed, looking more confused than ever.

Mark’s eyes settled on Eduardo, who looked like he was staring straight through Ryuk.

“Nothing. I, uh, I just horribly bombed my computing systems midterm.”

“You really need to do something about your grades, Mark.”

“I know.”

Finally, after what felt like eons, Eduardo turned around, waved a casual “see ya later,” and left Mark’s room. Ryuk grabbed one of the apples straight out of Mark’s hands as Mark let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“So he couldn’t see you.”

“Only people who have touched the Death Note can see me,” Ryuk explained, taking the second apple out of Mark’s hands.

“And you like apples.”

“Yes. They’re delicious. Nothing compares to apples from the human world.”

“Well if you like apples so much you should have showed up at Steve Jobs’ place.”

Ryuk gave Mark a puzzled look.

“So what are you exactly?”

“I’m a shinigami. A god of death. And what you have there was once my notebook.”

“So it’s my notebook now?”

“Yes. Once it touches the human world, it is the property of the first human who finds it.”

Mark picked up the notebook and looked at it, running his hands over the cover.

“And you just dropped it by accident?”

“No. I wanted someone smart to find it so I wouldn’t be bored following them around. That’s why I dropped it at Harvard. It’s ranked the number one university in the world.”

Mark thought about this for a second and then opened the notebook.

“Is there something in particular you need me to do with it in order to pay my debt to you then?” he asked.

_ If Ryuk needed someone smart to have the notebook, then there had to be some problem he was trying to solve with it. _

“Debt? Who said anything about debt? I was just bored, so I decided I might as well follow some smart human kid around for a while and maybe get some apples out of it. And when I’m done with you, it’s my responsibility to kill you with my notebook,” Ryuk replied, gesturing to the notebook on his belt.

Mark just stared blankly.

“I guess I might as well make this entertaining then, if you’re going to kill me once you get bored.”

He picked up his pencil and wrote:

**Osama bin Laden killed tonight at 11:59:69pm by a group of highly trained US military operatives.**

**Saddam Hussein killed tonight at 11:59:69pm by a group of highly trained US military operatives.**

**George Bush killed tonight at 11:59:69pm by a group of highly trained US military operatives.**

“This’ll give you entertainment, and you’ll keep me alive. Trust me. The political sphere is a delicate place, and once you do something drastic like this people will go crazy with opinions. The entire world will be turned upside down.”

Ryuk laughed his throaty laugh and settled on Mark’s bed before immediately hopping off.

“When was the last time you washed these sheets?!”

Mark rolled his eyes.

“I haven’t washed them since the beginning of the school year, but it’s not like I sleep much at all.”

“Disgusting,” the shinigami muttered as he slinked back into the corner he had originally appeared in.

Mark casually tossed the notebook into his desk drawer and turned on his desktop computer to start working on his homework. He drowned his empty stomach and desire to sleep in bad cafeteria coffee and ignored the 20 or so compiler warnings his code kept displaying, opting instead to plow through the assignment with no regard for form or accuracy.

_ It’s due at midnight. It’s due at midnight. _

The mantra swirled around in his head as he worked. Ryuk was still in his corner but distracted by the Nintendo DS Mark had slipped him in exchange for his silence. By the time he finally turned in the assignment (22 seconds before the deadline), the caffeine in his system had worn out and he was completely overwhelmed with the need to sleep. He hadn’t touched his bed in two days and was happy to finally get to climb into it when—

“Turn on the news.”

He fell off of the ladder to his bunk bed with a loud thump only to see Ryuk towering over him.

“Don’t you want to know what happened to all your political victims?” the shinigami asked, leaning down to get in his face.

Mark let out a huff but turned on the TV and switched the channel to CNN. All three attacks had been carried out successfully. Three different SEAL teams had gone rogue and murdered all of the targets in a carefully planned out strike attack, and the country was in an uproar. Suddenly, the entire country had political views to express. It was breaking news, and Mark had caused it. He couldn’t help but smile a little. That small black notebook and the demon-like death god who was invisible to the rest of the world had given him the power to influence the people in ways he had never known before.

His phone vibrated on his desk, and he picked up the clunky device to read the short text from Eduardo: “MySpace is down.” Apparently, people on Friendster and Myspace had been going crazy with conspiracy theories and making huge accusations about their friends. The family members of the members of the SEAL teams had been harassed and attacked online through the platforms. The creators of the platforms decided that enough was enough and suspended the services temporarily, or at least until “the political unrest decreased.”

_ That would mean that there are a ton of people here who are desperate for an avenue to express their opinions. _

He glanced at the clock. 1:00am.

_ Well I guess it’s another all-nighter. But this time, it’s worth it. Maybe I can finally get one of my apps up to 100 users and impress a company enough to get an internship despite my GPA. _

He opened up a new .php document.

“What are you doing?” asked Ryuk, finally looking away from the TV and over Mark’s shoulder.

“Taking advantage of this situation I’m in.”

The document was empty.

“Are you going to write about the Death Note and tell the world about it?” Ryuk asked.

“No way. I’d get arrested immediately. But people want a social media network and all the main ones are suspended so I might be able to make something crude but useable that everyone here will latch onto for lack of better options.”

“How will that help you?”

“It’ll look good on my resume I guess. My friends will also be pretty happy about it, and it’ll let all the crazy right wingers find each other and stop bothering everyone else.”

“I see. So what’s your next plan with the Death Note?”

“I’m not sure, but if I play my cards right, I can get the names and faces of all of my users, as well as anything they choose to post online. You could then ask me to kill anyone you’re interested in. It’ll keep you very occupied and make you not want to kill me. Does that interest you, Ryuk?”

The shinigami nodded emphatically.

“Great.”

He started typing into the document.

**// Name and Face Database**

_ No that’s too obvious and not catchy enough. _

**// Facebase**

_ No one would get it. _

Ryuk was still looking over his shoulder at his screen as he typed these.

“You’re even worse at naming things than whoever named these notebooks Death Notes,” the shinigami remarked with a cackle.

**// Facebook. Copyright 2004 Mark Zuckerberg.**


End file.
